[CentOS] RHEL 5 vs. CentOS 5

Ray Van Dolson rvandolson at esri.com
Thu Dec 6 23:32:34 UTC 2007


On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 03:25:32PM -0800, Lopez, Denise wrote:
> We have been using RHEL 3 / 4 in our environment and I am very happy and
> satisfied with the stability of the OS.  Now with the new technologies
> incorporated into RHEL5, specifically Virtualization, Clustering, and Storage,
> and the costs associated with them, I was wondering how similar CentOS and RHEL
> 5 were.

They should be identical.

>  
> 
> It is my understanding that CentOS is RHEL 5 with the RedHat icons removed but
> the functionality of the packages is the same.  In addition, updates may come a
> day or two later than RHEL 5. 
> 

Correct.  In addition, I think the CentOS kernels are basically the
"AS" kernels, and obviously there is no activation key, nor will you be
able to use RHN for errata notification, etc.

> 
> My boss is a little concerned about the differences since we host production
> servers that require minimal downtime.
> 

We typically continue to use RHEL for production stuff, and CentOS for
anything non-critical.  Not that CentOS wouldn't make a solid
production server.

Ray



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